You don't need to have evil motives for wanting to fake your identity or go incognito online; for many people, it's a matter of privacy and avoiding spammers and scammers. Thankfully, there are a great many tools for staying anonymous online. Here are a few of the best.
The Browser's Incognito Mode
The private browsing mode in Google Chrome, Firefox, and other browsers records no information about your browsing, including form data you enter, files you download, or history of pages you visit. To launch a window in private browsing mode, use these keyboard shortcuts:
- Chrome and Opera: Ctrl+Shift+N
- Firefox, Internet Explorer: Ctrl+Shift+P
For Safari, go to Safari > Private Browsing.
What about mobile devices? Use an alternative mobile browser that will clear your browsing history for you automatically such as Atomic Web Browser for the iPhone or Dolphin for Android.
Private Browsing Tricks
If you want to open your browser in private mode all the time, add a simple switch to your browser's shortcut. There are many ways to do this.
There's a Firefox extension called Private Browsing Window, which starts a new private browsing window in Firefox without closing your old ones.
Proxy Servers and VPNs
Although private browsing mode is great for preventing sites from writing trackable cookies and other info to your computer, it doesn't completely make you anonymous. If you want the most assurance that others won't know who you really are, you'll want to use a proxy server and/or a virtual private network connection so you can appear to be someone and somewhere else.
The free Tor software is one of the best for anonymizing your online sessions. It routes web requests through multiple tunnels, preventing sites from knowing who or where you are.
If you want to set up your own secure, encrypted system to access on the go, you can do this using Hamachi and Privoxy, tunneling traffic using your own home computer. You can read a step-by-step walkthrough on How to Secure and Encrypt Your Web Browsing on Public Networks (with Hamachi and Privoxy) here.
Another alternative is previously mentioned Windows app CyberGhost VPN, which is free for up to 6 hours of surfing or 1GB of downloading.
Disposable Email Addresses and Anonymous Email Sending
Disposable email address services hide your real email address and keep the spam out by giving you a temporary email address that forwards to your real one. There are so many different disposable email services to choose from. Spamgourmet is one of the earliest services and still great. You might also like Trashmail, which offers Firefox and Chrome extensions for convenience.
When it's time to send an email message or SMS, use a tool like Sharpmail.
Fake Identity Creators
Trying to stay anonymous can be difficult with all the forms websites require you to fill out. You can make up fake information yourself or, better yet, use something like previously mentioned Fake Name Generator to create a realistic fake ID that'll fool web forms.
So these are just some of the ways you can stay anonymous online. I'll be writing more useful tips later on about similar topics so stay tuned!
